When the World Shrinks to Just One Room

“Sometimes all we need is a little pampering to help us feel better.”

—Linus of Peanuts Fame

One of the harshest realities of a life threatening illness is how drastically the world changes. One month you are celebrating Thanksgiving in Texas, the Lone Star State, and the next month you are sitting in a hospital room wondering what a test will reveal.

For a time while my wife Margaret, terminally ill with pancreatic cancer, was sick, she was spending time upstairs in our master bedroom. The stairs themselves were not an insurmountable obstacle and she could still move around the house a bit. She had to sleep sitting propped up by a collection of pillows, but still, our bedroom served her needs and she was comfortable. But as the cancer took hold and her energy waned, it became clear we would need to move her downstairs into a bedroom off the den that had direct access to a bathroom and was easily accessible for her.

The most important part of this move wasn’t the moving of a bed into this tiny room or the fact that she wouldn’t be with me, but instead it was creating an environment that would not only work as a place for Margaret to rest, but as a place for her to live. Bedside tables were set up in easy reach of the new hospital bed. Paths to the bathroom as well as to the hallway were cleared out for easier navigation. We looked at the walls as places to put things that were a part of Margaret’s life, and not simply what kept the roof from caving in.

Having Margaret in our room helped keep fear at bay; fear of the unknown, fear of how bad her sickness might be, fear about how much our life might change. At that time we still didn’t know exactly what we were up against which meant that many things were possible. By the same token, knowing she had pancreatic cancer and all of the horrors that went with it, hope began to mean something different. We hoped she had more time and not less and that we could manage the pain. 

The basics you never give any thought to day-to-day suddenly become more important when you are trying to create an environment and space that will work for somebody facing a serious illness. Is the room too cold or too warm? Is it stuffy or is there too much of a breeze? How do you keep the place clean without making a big deal of cleaning it, without making lots of noise? Is the room quiet enough so she can get rest, but is it close enough to the rest of the house so she doesn’t feel isolated, so she is as connected as she can be?

My thinking shifted from viewing her room as a place with four walls where she had to spend time to considering it an environment. In a way this was the logical jump to make as we lived in Marin. As anybody who has spent some time on this side of the Golden Gate will tell you, Mother Earth very much rules the roost, and the love of nature, animals and all manner of organic pursuits makes everybody an environmentalist by default.

I had to shift from the practical aspects of how functional was the room to how did the room feel to her? Margaret appreciated beauty in both simple things and sophisticated settings. Moving her out of our room seemed so simple at the time, but it was almost an acceptance of what was to come.  My main focus  was to make sure that that small room was comfortable enough for her to feel healthy and happy AND to cherish my last memories with her no matter where she was.

 J. Dietrich Stroeh is author of Three Months: A Caregiving Journey from Heartbreak to Healing (2012 FolkHeart Press). For information, visit www.threemonthsbook.com.